The difficulty is perfectly fine. The reward for our effort, especially in Provisioning Phase, is crap.
First of all even when we secure top 20 pos. in ranks, there is nothing we gain if we do not participate in battle and even then there is not much of an adventage since the 2nd chance at drop still sucks.

That brings me to the awful drop rate, the effort is just not worth it and waiting 15min in between, rly SE?
It would be fine if we would get anything of value. maybe a similar concept like totem items which you change for a weapon, but make it a relative high drop rate and 1 item of choice for lets say 50 keyitems or something like that.
Something to work forward.

to summerize:

1. make the provisioning phase and top 20 more rewarding

2. make taking part in battle more appealing and less time consuming in waiting in between

oh and reaching level 2 is not possible at the moment on ragnarok, so do something about it